For posterity, I'll quote my post about Google's AlphaZero:
Quote: (12-27-2017 07:33 PM)Saccade Wrote:
This would be interesting to any RVF chess lovers, and is an important moment for computation in general. Check this out:
On December 5th, there was a series of 100 games between Stockfish 8 (the previous number 1 chess machine in the world) and Google child company's DeepMind product: Alpha Zero. AlphaZero, born from AlphaGo, a program that destroyed the world's top Go players, has made a big wave in the chess world.
Now, Stockfish 8 is unbeatable by any human; the best Grand Masters in the world can only hope for a draw with this beast. But, the result of those 100 games with Stockfish? AlphaZero didn't lose a single game. It's final score: 28 wins and 72 draws. Yeesh.
The poignant part of this:
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Indeed, AlphaZero was calculating roughly 80 thousand positions per second, while Stockfish, running on a PC with 64 threads (likely a 32-core machine) was running at 70 million positions per second.
https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-future...arns-chess
The program is more human in its approach, slashing brute computational force in favor of analysis of patterns of what it determines as good moves. Basically, it ain't thinking about the shit ones.
What's more, it was given no opening databases, and no other help other than the moves of the game. It self-learned in 24 hours...
If you'd like to see some of its games, 10 have been released for your perusing. I recommend ChessNetwork's videos (who is the best youtube chess channel bar none, in my opinion).
Start here:
Do any of y'all have any experience at chess tournaments/local clubs? I do, and I've participated in various events and seen what the chess world has to offer. I'm a slightly above average player ELO around 1200-1300, so these are the people I'm paired up with.
I've never met a group of people as strange as in the chess world. It seems the further you get up the ranking ladder, guys tend to be more well adjusted and usually very smart. But the guys around my level? Hoo boi. I've seen some funny situations in only 2 years in lightly dabbling in the scene, but this is what I can tell you: At my level, chess seems to attract people along the autism spectrum. Not everyone, but it's loaded.
There was this one time when I was playing rapid time controls, we were playing for money ($50 at a club) in a group of four. This one opponent was, I kid you not, the slobbiest man I've ever seen in my life. About 18 years old, new balance old man shoes (usually untied), dad jeans that his ankles swam in, and matching glasses and frizzled hair -- Like some cheap, young Doc Brown. It was a goddamn parody. In his game, he brought this small lil' tray of fries, the kind you get at a high school lunch.
Picture this, dead silent, munching on those fries, glasses all the way down the nose. The kicker? He was sliming the time clock with his greasy ass fingers the whole time. I mean, fuck, I thought this was a nice establishment and here is this guy. Somehow, it seemed he covered his whole half of the clock with the grease, but you don't even need to touch half of what was covered with grease?? Haha, anyway he lost his game and complained to the game judges that noise distracted him, and that this was inexcusable. I'll let you picture his voice, it's exactly what you'd guess. They caved and gave him a month of membership to the club to make up, really to shut him up.
I also once this met this big guy, out of shape but a good dude. Early 30s I think. We played some games, shared some laughs, and the guy took me to Subway and bought me a sandwich. He told me, late at night at those plastic subway tables, "Saccade, you wanna hear the secret to getting laid at a wedding? You gotta get on the dancefloor and dance." I thought, this guy fucks? He was funny as hell but there was no way he was laying 8's on the d-floor ala Samseau. Thinking now, it's good advice, and maybe he did get laid. I really liked that guy.
Anyway, this is just a short anecdote of the chess world. I'd highly suggest going out some day and seeing what your local club has to offer. You never know what kind of fun you'll find.